Archives for :
October2011

A long, long time ago, Games Workshop sold two 2′ by 4 boards for £35. These boards were painted green on one side and came with some sliding clips. This was positied as a gaming table for you to use for your battles (just add terrain – see my terrain post when it’s complete).

Being, 14 at the time and not overly familiar in my local DIY store, I invested in a set and have had them ever since. However, in the 10 years from when I stopped playing to picking up the hobby again, Games Workshop shifted the average table size up from 4′ by 4′ to 6′ by 4’…

So I sighed, and eventually wandered into a DIY store to collect an additional 2′ by 4′ board.

Games Workshop meanwhile, had moved on from DIY plywood boards to 2′ by 2′ plastic tiles. For years now I’ve looked at them, looked at the price tag and ran screaming from the store. Then a friend of mine decided to leave the country and sold me his Games Workshop Battleboards at a very reasonable price. … I’ll come back to this in a moment.

Now, assuming you go down the route I went down initially, and assuming you are not lucky enough to have a massive dining table (go cheap Swedish furniture stores….) then I recommend you pick up two wallpaper tables (the sort the allows you to roll the paper out so you can apply the paste). Put these together and lay your boards perpendicular to the direction the tables are running. You now have a gaming table to add scenery to, and the great thing? It’s easily packed away.

Back to the Battleboards…. Ok, aside from undercoating (I used 1.75 tins of Chaos Black undercoat – I seriously doubt you’ll need more than that!), I managed to complete all 6 boards in one afternoon with thanks to one of my local GW hobby stores and it’s manager.

I used the Games Workshop scenery paint kits which gives you a basic brown, an ochre, a brush, pva glue and two types of grass flock. Now this kit is at least £25 (possibly more now) and they don’t do any other colours. I decided to go for this as I wanted a base to use not only for my 40k armies but also my fantasy one.

I started brushing all of the boards with the brown paint, a good liberal coat on all 6, sometimes go back over with a second coat as it appears to dry very thin. The tub of brown you get with the paint pack is waaaaayyyy more than you need, I had at least 1/3 of the bottle left and i reckon I could have used a lot less.

After that coat is dry, you then dry brush on you’re ochre – I did use the entire bottle of ochre you’re given. Now this colour is very thick, so it can go a long way. Just in case you don’t know, dry brushing is loading the brush up with paint, wiping most of it off on towels then with the absolute minimum of paint left on the brush, run it over the boards, it will highlight all of the textures on the board.

Now the flock you get will not cover all 6 boards in a thick coat, think sparse grassland regions for your boards if you don’t have access to more flock (thankfully I was provided with access). In any case, it’s fairly simple – mix the pva with water in a 50:50 ratio then brush over the areas of the boards you want to flock. Then drop the flock over the glued areas and pat down. Leave it for 10-15 mins then tip the board and knock off the excess flock for use on the other boards.

I was advised by my local’s manager that you really, really need to Purity Seal (varnish) the boards after drybrushing (and/or flocking) . The reason for this? protect against wear and tear, as the boards are plastic and the paints acrylic; they will wear off, and the flock will peel away. In any case, another 1.75 tins of purity seal and your done.

I’m Kai (he who owns the blog’s other half :D)- and I’m painting some of the Dreadfleet stuff. Normally all I am is a writer, so painting and writing up guides is a new one on me, but here goes 😉

The Shadewraith ship seemed to be the easiest of all of them to paint. Much to my surprise, we undercoated it black, not white, and then I got to work.. My first step was Astronomicon grey – and I didn’t put the pieces together – painting them as separate elements.

(while I was waiting for it all to dry, I also did some of the base work on the Bone ruler)

The Astronomicon grey coat also had some details picked out in brown for the dried seaweed, though I have to admit, this was pretty much one of the easiest parts of the whole thing.

After the astronomincon grey was dry, my next step was a pretty heavy Thraka wash, which took forever to dry. I was very concerned that I was obliterating the detail at this point, but with the next step I started revealing gorgeous detail.

Drybrushing isn’t the most intuitive thing I’ve ever tried, in fact, I was sure I was doing it wrong, but I loaded the brush up carefully, wiped it, ran it across the back of my hand a couple of times (which really seemed to help), the drybrushed the deck first. I gave it another wash as suggested with a one and one mix of Thraka Green and Scorpion green, then, instead of edge highlighting, I spent some extra time dry brushing the edges again, giving a worn, textured look and feel to the whole ship. My finishing touches were adding some colour and detail to the teeny tiny canons then I stuck it all together, taking great care to ensure that the masts weren’t damaged on insertion. I added some extra texture to the seaweed by washing them carefully in badab black and added some drybrushed detail to the ghosts and wraiths hiding in the seaweed below the ship.

The base was completed as per the other instructions on a previous post, with attention paid to the parts that was ship specific in the same way as it was painted.

For me, Dreadfleet has a huge potential to be a very pretty set, I’m not just talking about the ships, or the islands, but alsos the tools to make the game work. with this in mind, I decided to get on and paint the windguage.

I started with a black undercoat on both sides.

On the front side (the one pictured above) I decided to start by dry brushing a 1:1 mix of Scorched Brown and Shining Gold over the main face.

I then picked out the storm clouds with Adeptus Battlegrey and washed the main face down with Devlan Mud.

Next up, I washed the storm clouds with Badab Black, and whilst that dried, I dry brushed the main face with Shining Gold. When the clouds dried, I edge highlighted the clouds with Space Wolf Grey and then a thiner line highlight of skull white.

I finished the front off by picking out the raised triangles on the inner ring with Boltgun Metal.

For the rear plate, I did the same gold drybrush/highlight mix for the outer ring and clouds. For the faceplate of the rear, I painted it down with Astronomican Grey then washed it Thrakka Green.

When that dried, I applied a 1:1 mix of Scorpion Green and Thrakka Green to random spots, drybrushed the raised areas with Astronomican Grey and line highlighted the raised areas with Skull White.

Ruler and Wheels of Bone

I started the wheels and ruler with a Skull White undercoat.

This was then painted Bleached Bone and liberally washed down with Gryphonne Sepia. When it dried, it looked like this:

The final steps for this bone effect was to drybrush the raised areas with more Bleach Bone.

I then picked out the skull eye sockets on both the wheels and ruler with a Badab Black wash.

First off, I HATE painting light colours, by light colours I mean pale colours such as white, yellow, etc. It’s why I play Necrons, Imperial Guard and Blood Angels – I use strong dark colours in all of my armies. So tackling the Seadrake, was always going to be a pain for me. Looking at the White Dwarf guide filled me with dread as I tried to work out how I could make the guide easier on me, whilst still looking for opportunities to learn new painting methods.

Up until now I’ve done every ship in Chaos Black undercoat, I figured that doing the same with the Seadrake may make it come out a little too dark for my liking so I did the hull, towers, dragons and sails in Skull White and the main decking in Chaos Black.

I then went over the hull in Astronomican Grey, Calthan Brown for the decking, Deneb Stone for the towers, a 2:1 mix of Space Wolf Grey: Ice Blue for the tower roofs.

I then washed the towers in Sepia, the decking in Devlan Mud and the roofs in Badab Black.

Whilst I waited for that to dry, I painted the sails Enchanted Blue and then washed them in Asurmen Blue wash.

I did my hull dragon in Macharius Solar Orange, washed him in Baal Red, dry brushed him a 1:1 mix of Golden Yellow and Blazing Orange and finally washed the wing membranes ins Baal Red again. I picked out the sail detail with Skull White, drybrushed the hull, towers and decking with Bleached Bone and re-washed the decking with Devlan Mud again. I layered the tower roofs with Shadow grey and edge highlighted with Space Wolf Grey and picked out the dragon, hull runes, rudder and weapon ports in Shining Gold. I then washed the dragon and the rudder in Devlan Mud.

This was my end result:

The White Dwarf issue discussing the painting tips suggests a white/blue dragon for independent stuff, now, whilst this is a fine traditional colour scheme for High Elves, I wanted to add a little character to mine, so I went with a Purple Dragon. Paint the dragon in Liche Purple, then wash it down in Leviathan Purple. I then dryburshed it with Warlock Purple and washed the wing membranes in Asurmen Blue.

So in my previous post, I discussed how I painted the blimps of the Grimnir’s Thunder. Here I’ll discuss the ship itself….

Grimnir’s Thunder is the armour tank of the alliance and one of two (arguably the only true) carrier of the Alliance’s fleet. She’s a behemoth of metallics and if WD 382 is to be believed a simple paint job….

Whilst it’s true, you do only work initially with three colours, the amount of intricate details on this model make it far from simple to paint.

As usual with my ships, I decided to paint the components and base before assembly. My base guide here covers the basics of the base, though with the Thunder’s base, there is a small (what appears to be) steam powered mini boat in one corner.

Not sure how easy it is to spot, so let me jump to the end for a second…

As you can see here, the little ship (aww dinky) has been done in a paint scheme similar to the Grimnir’s Thunder (so Chainmail for the steel, 1:1 mix of Shining Gold and Scorched Brown) for the paddles and turret weapon. Wash it down with Devlan Mud, then highlight back up. Do all of this after you have finished painting the base, otherwise your colours might mix during the washes.

Grimnir’s Thunder’s base colours are Gnarloc Green, Chainmail, a 1:1 mix of Scorched Brown and Shining Gold and Tin Bitz. WD 382 talks you through it as a paint guide.

In my case though I fond the little details (the runes) the hardest to sort out. Let me show you.

In the WD they recommend you do the metallics first, nuh-uh, in my case, I did the greens first and then applied the metallics.

This meant when I came to wash (again the guide says do it for just the steel and the green) I could do the whole thing.

To highlight (also in the above picture) I just went over the various panels in their various layers (see WD 382 to find out what colours I used). Keeping the detailing clean here was the hardest part and required a really steady hand (I recommend holding the model in one hand, the tip of the brush in the other and with practice u can get a good stead hand by pressing the heels of your hands together while you paint (or buy a vice….).

White Dwarf advised another layer of fine line highlighting around the steel panels and some randomized chipping by mixing Blazing Gold and Mithril Silver together and applying it on the various ‘gold’ metallic points. Frankly i liked the end result without that step as it gave a much more striking model….